Ballet Makes A Splash -- But Not Like It Would Want

One of the more unusual rescue operations following Hurricane Charley last month involved two dancers, several large garbage bags and about 250 pairs of ballet shoes.

Joey Lynn Mann, who orders and distributes shoes for the professional dancers of the Orlando Ballet, arrived at the company's downtown headquarters the day after Charley slammed through Central Florida. She knew the first floor would be flooding. Her husband, dancer Sergiu Brindusa, donned garbage bags as galoshes and waded into the Dr. Phillips Center for the Arts to retrieve the shoes, delicate creations of leather, satin, cardboard and glue that would disintegrate if left in the moisture.

Their rescue effort was a success, and the company's dancers -- who returned to work Tuesday after a summer hiatus -- will be shod for the foreseeable future out of the back of Mann's car. But the rest of the Orlando Ballet's inventory, its offices and rehearsal studios have not been as fortunate.

The ballet company is housed in the Dr. Phillips Center, a 1920s Orlando power plant across from Lake Ivanhoe that was renovated and reopened as an arts center 12 years ago, giving the ballet and Orlando Opera a landmark address. But its first floor dips below street level, and, when the lake rises -- as it has during hurricanes Charley and Frances -- the ballet's lower-level offices, studios, lobby, scenic and costume shops take on water. (The opera's offices are on upper levels.)

Previous rainy periods also have caused flooding, but never quite like this, says ballet marketing and public-relations director Ruth Katz.

"The water table is literally lifting through the floor. There's this black fungus growing up the walls."

The musty smell pervades the lower level of the building.

Administrative staff, who have been working while the dancers were off, and students at the Orlando Ballet School, whose classes are in studios upstairs, have waded through halls under a half-inch to a couple of inches of water for the past month. Carpets have been pulled up and discarded; furniture is either stacked up or soaking in water.

They have been using machines to extract water from the building during the day, but the water has been returning overnight, Katz said.

The costume shop at the building's lowest level had to be abandoned and costumes moved to the drier -- although still puddled -- scenic shop. The box office, just off the building's flooded lobby, has been closed to all but phone business.

Ballet executive director Russell Allen estimates a loss of $40,000 in costumes alone. The sprung-wood floors of the two downstairs ballet studios -- where dancers began rehearsing Tuesday for their Oct. 15 season opening -- may have to be replaced at a cost of at least $60,000. The cushioning that forgives leaping dancers' landings is sitting spongelike in water.

"It hurts our budget," Russell says. "If we aren't able to compensate" for the losses, "I'm afraid we might incur the first deficit we've had in six years."

While the ballet company assesses its losses, the Ivanhoe Foundation has filed claims with its insurance company and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The foundation, which renovated the building, leases it from the Orlando Utilities Commission and manages it for the arts groups.

"It's a bigger issue" than this one flood, says Ivanhoe president Ted Steilen. He says the foundation is working with OUC to find a permanent solution to the ballet's water problems.

"We don't want to put the ballet through this every time we have a major storm," he says. OUC is "working on it with us," he says. "But they have had some other problems right now -- getting power to the people."

In the meantime, as artistic director Fernando Bujones begins rehearsing the dancers for their "Ballet to Tango, Latin & Jazz" program, marketing director Katz has a suggestion: